Finn McRedmond: The tide is turning against the sexual revolution

Adonis himself might be jealous were he afforded the chance to watch Love Island. A camera permanently ogles the golden skin and barely dressed bodies of the male and female contestants of the hit reality TV show, as they attempt the ancient ritual of coupling up with one another under the beating Spanish sun. And through it all, the sexual neuroses of the world are broadcast on British prime time TV.

But that sun might be about to set on Love Island’s otherworldly success. And the enthusiasm for beaming the most sexualised aspects of popular culture into our livingrooms may be about to wane. Sex sells, so we have always been told. But there is an increasing sense that something more staid, more traditional, and thoroughly more conservative is asserting itself in the zeitgeist.

Despite their apparent iconoclasm, Perry and Emba are not subversive but in fact utterly traditional

Two books this year have set out to challenge the liberal West’s permissive sexual mores. Most recently, in The Case Against The Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry argues the sexual revolution — that is the advent of the contraceptive pill, the ensuing free love movement, and its proliferation through society to the present day — has revealed its inadequacies, and women are feeling the brunt.

Perry sees the exploitative pornography industry as a manifestation of society’s increasingly compromised sexual ethics; she argues for the beneficial role of marriage and the danger of losing it as an institution; and she raises alarm bells over extremely troubling acts of violence that can be permitted under the broad church of “consent”.

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Meanwhile in Rethinking Sex, Christine Emba posits that the “best sexual world is perhaps a less free one.” She suggests there is no such thing as casual sex, and the no-strings-attached mantra behind the so-called “hook-up” culture has left us all, particularly young women, emotionally bereft. Perry and Emba take issue with the meteoric rise of dating apps: Perry because they provide no mechanism for women to vet the character of a potential date; and Emba because they force us to curate ourselves for a “digital marketplace”.

It is hardly a rosy outlook. Its focus on young women and their relationship with men means it’s an argument that only pertains to heterosexual relationships. And despite their apparent iconoclasm, Perry and Emba are not subversive but in fact utterly traditional.

Perry and Emba did not forge this sex-critical movement on their own. In fact, there is myriad evidence that they are simply reflecting something that was set in motion long ago. We need only look at the rise and fall of the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret to see that a conservative backlash to liberal sexual ethics may have been mounting for some time now.

How does it fit into a country like Ireland, somewhere that has staked so much of its identity on its recent and rapid liberalisation?

In 2015 its parent company, of which Victoria’s Secret produced most of the revenue, was valued at $28 billion. By early 2020 Victoria’s Secret was valued at just $1.1 billion. Its once world-famed fashion show drew nearly 10 million viewers in 2013, down to 3.3 million in 2018, and called off for good by 2019.

“Victoria’s Secret has struggled to keep pace with shifting consumer tastes” wrote CNN Business, attributing its downfall to the fact that modern beauty standards were moving away from the company’s hyper thin and hyper blonde ambassadors. But we might attribute the collapse to something more foundational. Perhaps it was not because the women were too blonde or too thin — though it is not an irrelevant consideration — but because discomfort with the hyper sexualisation itself was becoming mainstream.

Every action has its equal and opposite reaction. And, if Perry is right and the harmful impacts of the sexual revolution have only recently become clear, maybe she is also right that a correction was inevitable. And it is part of a broader trend: the emergence of Catholicism as a fashion statement is reflective of a more deeply held traditional bent. Love Island could be the next casualty. Dating apps are already adapting to accommodate a more complicated social landscape. And perhaps things like Victoria’s Secret were always, teleologically, destined to fail.

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But how does it fit into a country like Ireland, somewhere that has staked so much of its identity on its recent and rapid liberalisation? It has not even been a decade since we legalised gay marriage and not even five years since we legalised abortion. As a nation we rightly wear our socially liberal mantle with pride. And we do so in spite of our lateness to that game.

The two world views are probably not mutually exclusive. We can celebrate progress made for gay people and women while also acknowledging that hook-up culture may have its downstream harms; that marriage and the nuclear family are of central importance to many in society, and that female empowerment comes in forms far more complex than simple sexual liberation.

In fact, finding an equilibrium between such competing perspectives is probably the ultimate mark of a grown-up political culture.